


Oh all the thing we could be

by Catherines_Collections



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Pocket Watches, Regeneration, freeze rays, unsubtle references and puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 12:22:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8372188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/pseuds/Catherines_Collections
Summary: There’s a switch on the wall that he has never really been able to look at.





	

**Author's Note:**

> An idea i had, wrote, edited, and posted! I own nothing, Hope you enjoy:)!

There’s a switch on the wall that he has never really looked at. Or well, that’s not completely right. He’s glanced at it, or at least in its general direction, but he’s never truly seen it, never taken the time to observe and evaluate the item like he has everything else in his lab.

(It’s a tendency he’s never been fond of but unable to shake, a sense of left over paranoia from a time that seems like a bitter memory, carving its way through his chest and nestling deep and daring into his being.) 

What he does know of the switch is that it’s to the right of his computer and in-between a poorly hung poster of a previous idol chosen in bad taste and a nearly prehistoric freeze ray prototype. And for some reason, at this time while he usually evaluates everything in his perimeter - for being a well known super villain does not come without its crazy anarchist or crazier fans, each with their own set of diabolical ideas that he will openly admit are sometimes possible even more barbaric than his own - he leaves the switch unexamined. 

It isn’t that he’s not curious as to why his eyes shift away after every brief glance in the switches direction, or that whenever he returns to his lab he sleeps restlessly considering he was unable to complete his full check up routine. It’s obvious something is fishy about the switch, the redirected eyes and mind and the feeling that something is always left unfinished, unsaid, unheard. It’s that there’s a voice - that feels like a memory, though he has no recollection of it, speaking to him whenever he becomes too curious or too distracted by it that all he can think of is walking to it and staring - whispering: not yet.

So for now, with little to respond with and the feeling of ignorance to a greater cause clouding over him, he sits and he waits for the day the voice will beckon and his eyes will finally refuse to shift. 

.

He’s known by many names these days- more so titles put in place in order to symbolize what he does rather than who he is; almost as if he deserves no name other than the identity he cloaks himself in. For names give power and a sense of humanity and in the eyes of many he is deserving of neither- but there is one, a secret hidden inside of a worn box in one of the chambers of his heart and locked inside of the cold lips of a woman twice adored at once, that the public knows nothing of. He uses it no longer, having buried it the day he fulfilled his dream and became so many people’s nightmares, expect for the moments he needs solitude. 

It is within these moments in which he slips old gloves nearly worn through onto his hands in place of the new, and changes out a red coat for an aged one of white. He uses his old key and walks to a building he hasn’t belonged to in ages and feels like decades have passed by when he finally reaches his old lab. And when he enters he sits for a moment and breathes and breathes and thinks on nothing past a failed impromptu frozen yogurt, date, intervention along with red hair and the thoughts of new world orders and possible unseen greatness.

He sits in his abandon lab, papers strewn across the dusty space, with the name Billy echoing in his head, a series of melodies pushed back into dark spaces better left forgotten in search of a should be dead dream, following buddy all while the words each fail to part from his mouth and the deranged brain from which they stemmed.

.

The switch, he notices one day in the middle of conducting an experiment for a new super weapon with the designed function to eliminate potential threats, has slowly become more bothersome by the day. He labels it a constant distraction considering that the thought of it has distracted him from every plan he was in the midst of concocting or fulfilling. 

(He thanks whatever deity may be dwelling above that every self-proclaimed superhero that blows through town comes with the faults of little to no experience and the need for constant attention and affirmation, otherwise he fears the possibility of failing in his horrible task thanks to the distraction provided by the infuriating switch.)

His eyes still shift away at every glance but each time he captures and remembers a different detail. Like that the cover seems less of an eggshell and more of a pearl gold, and that it’s shaped less like the traditional rectangle and more in the shape of a circle or oval. He even notices on one occasion that there seems to be a gleam coming from above, a silvery dot that looks to have stretched a line down directly above the switch. A shadow perhaps but of what? He also notices that of every power source, all the outlets, machinery, and non-battery powered items, the switch controls none of them.

It takes a while; forty-three more glances to be exact, for him to realize the switch was never a switch at all.

.

There’s a memorial site, on the edge of town right beside a prospering homeless shelter and well preserved laundry mat still opened for business, for a memorable missed hero dead in every way but heartbeat.

He goes occasionally, in his normal dressing and the alias of Todd Riley beneath his heavy belt, and pays everything other than respect. He shares creative insults, the level depending on the amount of people around and children present, and age old jest and mockeries that raise an old anger in him that nearly brings forth tears. But they are not for him, no, never for him. 

He ponders sometimes on traveling to find him, the legendary hero who few remember by name and one from unseen scars and long faded bruises. He thinks of tracking down the hero, who still lives and yet holds the title of death, and destroying him slowly. Taking apart every piece slowly and painfully and cherishing the screams he gives that she could not. And this is where he always ends up, and this is where he always stops. He leaves the memorial without another word.

(Later he returns with his goggles, gloves, coat and properly known title adorn. A newly made weapon in his hands, and burns the memorial until all that remains are scraps of unidentifiable rubble. There are no screams around him, no threats made by those in passing to call the local hero. Everyone hides inside their tiny homes with their tiny families smothered by their tiny lives. 

Society, he has always said, is an anarchy he needs to rule, and now-as he stands in wake of the memorials destruction- he realizes he has done it. He looks around, his old arch-nemesis method of remembrance gasping at his feet, and smiles. Because he’s finally done it, he’s finally won, and there is no one left to thwart the villains.)

.

It’s the seventy-sixth glance, since he began to notice and therefore count, and the same day he has finally finished an outline for a new scheme to assure himself a boost in the league that he realizes he can see the not-a-switch switch on his wall nearly clearly. It’s still blurry around the edges but his eyes don’t automatically stray as though they’ve been programmed to do so, and he takes it as a rather improving start. 

He walks toward the wall slowly, deliberately, taking each step with great care and caution; its five feet from his desk and four and a half from him. When he finally reaches the wall he checks around the switch for any sign of traps, explosions, or imminent threats. This is when he notices the line hanging from the hook is not a shadow, though there would be nothing there to cast a shadow of obviously he had little else to form a hypothesis of, but a chain. A chain, to be exact, connected to a switch that, as he inspects closer, resembles a strange but beautifully crafted pocket watch. 

The engravings themselves are breathtaking and strangely foreign, alien even. He wants nothing more than to grab it in that moment, to take it and hold it, and so he does but nothing more.

His left hand shakes as he removes the golden chain from its home on the silver hook, and places the chain and watch into his hand, further inspecting the engravings. Something shifts inside of him, a mix of exhilaration and dread, as he wonders on the origin of the watch in his hand. The feeling opens up gateways upon gateways of possibilities and his entire body begins to quiver beneath the force and possibilities of his thoughts. 

It’s really of no surprise to him when the voice, having remained dormant for too long in his moment of need, finally speaks. It’s faint and foreign and seems to be speaking through tens of thousands of voices all at once, each saying different words and phrases all at once. If he knew no better he would say it was composed of tens of different souls.

But then a voice, no more timid or desperate as the others to be heard, rings through his head and its message, for an unknown reason, takes his breath. Now, it says, factual and the right amount of eerie ambiance and wickedness in its tone to seduce him have he not been already, open me now.

He does not remove his eyes from the designs on the watch as he moves his fingers to the buttons, nor turn his ears from the constant messages flooding from the watch. But he does take in a silent hesitant breath, as though he fears it may be his last, and finally presses the golden watch’s button and earning a sharp click that raises above all the voices in only for a second. It’s a moment lost to time when he hears the click for he has no measurement to accurately calculate the time between the resounding noise, deafening silence, and the sudden flood of golden light that knocks him back into his desk and crashing onto the floor. 

.

He doesn’t visit her grave often; He can’t bring himself to. He’s learned to maintain the guilt now, how to construct barriers to keep it from crashing like a tidal wave and then flooding through him. He’s taught himself where to stand now, how far he needs to be from the sea of guilt to keep himself from drowning. 

(He slipped the first few times, some more accidental than others, and felt the worst he ever had. He does not give himself false illusions of what her pain must have felt like as he is pulled under current after current in the rocky ice water, but he fears to imagine.)

Greatness is not all it was promised to be. Social order remains an unstable anarchy that he rules only a fraction of, and sickness still plagues humanity strong as ever. Though with the league he receives more respect and funding he also receives more restrictions, accommodations to the plans for those in league above him. 

He misses her. Misses everything he could have had with her. And he tells her those spars days he can bring himself to visit her grave. 

(He spends hours there. One time he fell asleep and woke to a sky dark with night.)

Sometimes he’ll sit and laugh maddeningly as people walk by with concern and understanding written across their faces. He talks to her and laughs at her and cries for her. 

One day, after too few visits and his barriers on the brink of collapsing from the breaking waves, he makes a point to tell her he’s sorry.

And not too soon after begins to laugh maddeningly, tears brimming in his eyes, once again when he confesses that she was the only one Dr. Horrible ever killed.

.

The voices from the watch grow louder and louder and his own mind dimmer and dimmer with each of their own whispers. He’s laughing again; he always seems to be these days, bitterly and with his mouth dripping scarlet. He knows something is wrong, he can feel to stabbing pain on his sides and the acceleration of his heart. 

It isn’t willingly that he allows his mind to close, it does nevertheless, but he before it does he set a fire. It scorches and burns everything it can get its hands on inside, leaving behind only rubble and ashes. No traces, no memories of who-could-have-been Billy’s or Red heads with a too caring heart.

.

It is from the ashes of Dr. Horrible that a timelord rises and then ignites from golden light.

**Author's Note:**

> I have this mental series where i love thinking about other possible reincarnations of the master so here you are! Also i will always only imagine Simm as the master, it will be my downfall. I may continue, but most likely not.
> 
> Comments and Kudos are much appreciated, come over to my tumblr rhymesofblue if you wanna chat, and thank you for reading!


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